ATHABASCA — The first volume may start north of Athabasca, but author Sheila Willis has plans to follow the Athabasca River down to include the town and county in a series of history books.
The Smith author and entrepreneur is the creator of the History Check app, an all-in-one place to find amenities, plan your trip, and learn some history of the province of Alberta while you’re at it, and now she has started a series of history books with the first one starting in the Lesser Slave Lake region, Alberta History: Lesser Slave Lake Region: News Reviews Volume 1: 1880-1896.
“In that time period, it was when the missionaries were coming up and there was more agriculture,” Willis said in a Feb. 22 interview. "It was still before Treaty 8 because the treaty was signed in 1899.”
Willis has always been an amateur historian rounding up facts for her app, so it was natural progression to start authoring books.
“I think if people take the time to read books like this, or if they are in schools, they kind of give you an insight into how we got to where we are today,” she said. “There’s one story in there, it talks about Bishop (Isidore) Clut coming up the river with six Sisters of Providence, and they’re going to Lesser Slave Lake post, which is Grouard, to establish a mission. A trader remembers the trip up and the Sisters plucking the children off the lake shore.”
The 379-page book of newspaper clippings and articles covers 1880 to 1896, but the next one will only cover 1897 to 1898, the Klondike Gold Rush.
“They were going to be in this book until we realized it was going to end up being an 800- or 900-page book,” said Willis.
But it’s not just a book of history, it’s a cross-referenced resource too. Willis spent hours meticulously cataloguing each entry then listed them under themes as well, like Indigenous Impacts.
There are stories about the fur trade economy and how Indigenous people were key to the fur trade in Northern Alberta, the start of the mission and residential schools, gold, oil, the Hudson Bay Company, and a steamboat named Athabasca.
One of the snippets from the Edmonton Bulletin on Jan. 21, 1888, talks about a man who came back to the area after evading police:
“Cecil Courterielle, who escaped from the police last fall while being taken to penitentiary for the murder of his stepmother, is back home at Lesser Slave Lake following his ordinary way of life. The people there think it would be unjust of the authorities to attempt to take him into custody again as they hold the opinion he did nothing wrong, but it is understood that they propose to resist should the attempt to retake him be made.”
Each entry is noted for the publication, date, page, and paragraph number so it is easy to look up page 3 of the March 21, 1888, edition of the Edmonton Bulletin which had a paragraph about the winter:
“Both the Lesser Slave Lake and Peace River regions were having a mild winter. It seems as though the moose disappeared as well as the wolves that might have chased them out. In the cattle of both districts, a disease resembling foot and mouth disease has broken out.”
The paperback is available on Amazon and more physical locations are being added almost daily, Willis said.
“Various museums are ordering them for their gift shops, Sawridge Truckstop (in Slave Lake) already has theirs on order, and then I’m waiting for my first 100 copies for all my book signings,” she said.
There will be a signing at Char’s Railway Café in Smith on March 5, Smith Library March 9, and one in Athabasca at A Little Bit of Everything from 1-5 p.m. March 12.
“So, when I was talking to the management at A Little Bit of Everything, they knew this book was coming out and they suggested a book signing there as well and asked if I would mind if they combined it with me and Nicole Kerr,” said Willis.
Kerr is a local children’s book author of Esther and Chester Create Their Day which came out last August.
